L’Écho annamite
- A few words on Mr Trân-van-Tri’s letter to Mr Monet
- Nước mắm
- The mandate system
The page’s selected voices contest how power is justified and restrained. A letter argues that demands for rights can prepare future economic equality even without immediate success; a consumer challenges deregulation justified by calling fish sauce a condiment. The colonial lecture report describes international mandates as supervised tutelage, language whose hierarchy and legal limits require separate scrutiny.
Translation
A few words on Mr Trân-van-Tri’s letter to Mr Monet
History teaches us that a mistaken hypothesis, or an ordinary laboratory accident, can lead to great discoveries. Likewise, demands are doubtless useless, since they produce no immediate result. Yet they still help prepare the new ground on which a solid house will later be built. They will remind our political masters that we will not let ourselves be shut away in a closed world, entirely ignorant of the rights whose denial prevents us from competing on equal terms with foreigners in economic life. How, indeed, can we compete successfully with merchants and manufacturers from other countries without enjoying even a tiny fraction of their liberties? “The number of people who scrape a living outside the shelter of government employment,” you say, is very small. Nothing prevents that number from growing, unless the Annamites are utterly devoid of that capacity for indignation found even among peoples least attached to freedom and independence.
Nước mắm
Under the heading “Nước mắm is not a food,” I read in a short item in L’Impartial of the 14th that the Tonkin nước mắm commission met on Monday morning at the senior residency in Hanoi, chaired by Mr Broni, resident of Quang Yên. A majority favoured repealing the legislation in force, on the grounds that nước mắm was a condiment, not a food.
What a clever idea! Could it be that, simply by virtue of this “definition,” the makers and retailers of this sauce would henceforth be allowed to poison consumers to their hearts’ content? That would be interesting to know, since the prospect is hardly reassuring for consumers.
As a lifelong nước mắm eater, I would very much like an answer to that question, and to know how the senior administration intends to receive the Hanoi commission’s decision.
The mandate system
The mandate system is the great contemporary innovation in colonization. It arose during the peace negotiations, when the fate of the former German colonies and the non-Turkish territories freed from Ottoman rule had to be settled. Two approaches clashed: entrusting these countries to the League of Nations, or giving the victorious nations full sovereignty over them. The mandate represents a compromise between these approaches.
Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations therefore entrusted “developed nations” with the “tutelage” of these territories as “mandatories” of the League and as a “sacred mission of civilization.” The arrangements were made more specific when the League Council approved the various mandates.
As a form of guardianship, a mandate is exercised in the interest of the minor. Whether or not its duration is specified, as in the case of Iraq, it must naturally end when the people subject to it come of age. The mandatory state exercises no sovereignty over the country under its tutelage, whose inhabitants retain their nationality. The mandatory must derive no special advantage from its mandate: it may not establish military bases in the territory it administers, and may recruit only militias for local policing. It is responsible for fostering the inhabitants’ development, suppressing slavery, prohibiting the arms trade, and so forth. Finally, it is subject to the supervision of the mandates commission, which has the right to make observations on its administration.
Context
What could a demand achieve without an immediate victory?
The letter answers a practical objection to political agitation: why ask for rights when the authorities will not grant them now? Its image of preparing a foundation gives demands a longer timescale. Publicly naming a grievance can build the expectations and solidarity needed for later change. The argument is therefore about the value of sustained political speech under colonial rule, rather than a promise that this particular appeal will win an immediate concession.
Why link civil liberties to making a living?
The writer treats economic competition and political rights as connected. Foreign merchants and industrialists enjoy freedoms denied to the people being addressed; government employment offers another, dependent route to a livelihood. The reply to Tri argues that a larger independent commercial public can emerge. That makes the size of the population outside official employment a political question: it affects who can press demands without relying on the administration for a career.
A food classification with consequences at the table
The nước mắm dispute turns on the reach of regulation. If the existing rules apply to foods and the commission removes the sauce from that category, a seemingly technical definition may alter the obligations of producers and sellers. The consumer’s sarcastic question makes that consequence tangible: changing a label on paper does not change what people put in their mouths. The article asks who will retain responsibility for the product’s safety.
How a consumer enters an administrative debate
The contributor writes as a habitual eater, not as a member of the Hanoi commission. By responding in the press to another newspaper’s report, the writer brings an administrative recommendation before a broader public and addresses the higher authority that must respond. The humour gives an everyday consumer a voice in a procedure otherwise described through officials, meetings and legal categories.
Why mandates were presented as guardianship
After the war, the mandate formula placed territories under powers acting on behalf of the League. Article 22 justified that arrangement through a hierarchy of peoples’ supposed capacity for self-government. Its categories allowed markedly different degrees of administration, from provisional recognition of former Ottoman communities’ independence to close integration of some territories with a mandatory. “Coming of age” was thus a political framework for foreign rule, not a single timetable shared by every territory.
What international supervision could actually do
Article 22 required annual reports to the League Council and established a permanent commission to examine them and advise the Council. The commission was therefore a supervisory body, not the day-to-day government of each territory. That distinction explains the article’s emphasis on observations about administration: the system sought accountability through international reporting and scrutiny while leaving governing power in the mandatory’s hands.
Original
Quelques mots sur la lettre de M. Trân-van-Tri à M. Monet
L'histoire nous apprend qu'une hy-
pothèse erronée, qu'un vulgaire acci-
dent de laboratoire conduisent à de
grandes découvertes. De même, sans
doute, les revendications sont inu-
tiles, car elles n'aboutissent à aucun
résultat immédiat. Elles n'en contri-
buent pas moins à préparer le ter-
rain nouveau sur lequel la maison so-
lide se construira plus tard. Elles
rappelleront à nos maîtres politiques
que nous ne nous laissons pas enfer-
mer dans une vie en vase clos, dans
l'ignorance totale des droits dont la
privation ne nous permet pas de lut-
ter à armes égales avec les étrangers
sur le terrain économique. Comment,
en effet, concurrence, avec chance de
succès, les commerçants et indus-
triels des autres pays sans avoir la mi-
nime partie des libertés dont eux jouis-
sent ? Le nombre des gens qui végètent
ailleurs qu'à l'ombre du fonctionna-
riat ", dites-vous, est bien faible. Rien
ne l'empêche de s'accroître à moins
que les Annamites ne soient absolu-
ment dépourvus de cette faculté de
s'indigner que l'on rencontre chez les
peuples les moins épris de liberté,
d'indépendance.
« nuoc-mam D
Sous le titre : Le « inuoc-mam a n'esi
pas un aliment, je lis, dans un entre-
filet de Y Impartial du 14 courant, que
la commission du nuoc-mam du Ton-
kin s'était réunie Lundi matin, à la
Résidence supérieure à Hanoi, sous
la Présidence de M. Broni, Résident
de Quang Yên, et qu'à la majorité,
cette commission avait été d'avis de
rapporter la législation en vigueur,
partant du principe que le nuoe-mam
était un condiment, et non un aliment
Pour être bien trouvé, c'est bien
trouvé 1 Est-ce que, par hasard, pour
cette simple - raison - de « définition »,
les fabricants et les revendeurs de cet.
te sauce seraient autorisés, à l'avenir,
à empoisonner les consommateurs,
au gré de leurs désirs? Voilà qui se-
rait intéressant à connaître, cette
perspective étant moins que rassu-
rante pour les consommateurs.
Moi qui suis un mangeur de nuoc-
mâm devant l'Eternel, je voudrais
bien être fixé sur ce point et connaî-
tre l'accueil que va réserver la haute
Administration à la décision de la
Commission de Hanoi.
Le régime du mandat
Le système du mandat est la grande
innovation contemporaine en matière
de colonisation. Il est né au cours des
négociations de paix, quand il s'est
agi de régler le sort des anciennes
colonies allemandes et des territoires
non turcs soustraits à la domination
ottomane. Deux tendances s'affron-
taient : remettre ces pays à la Société
des Nations; les donner, en toute
souveraineté, aux nations victorieuses.
Le mandat représente un compromis
entre ces tendances.
L'article 22 du pacte de la Société
des Nations a donc remis à des « na-
tions développées » la « tutelle » des
territoires en question, en tant que
« mandataires » de la Société des Na-
tions, et comme « une mission sacrée
de civilisation *. Le régime a été pré-
cisé lors de l'approbation des divers
mandats par le Conseil de la Société
des Nations.
Tutelle, le mandat s'exerce donc
dans l'intérêt du mineur, et, que
sa durée soit ou non précisée (com-
me dans le cas de l'Irak,) doit natu-
rellement expirer avec la minorité du
peuple soumis à son régime. L'état
mandataire n'exerce aucune souve-
raineté sur le pays en tutelle, dont les
habitants gardent leur nationalité. Le
mandataire ne doit tirer aucun avanta-
ge particulier de son mandat : il ne peut
établir, sur le territoire qu'il admi-
nistre, des bases militaires ; il n'y peut
recruter que des milices destinées à
la police locale. Il a la charge de
veiller au développement des habi-
tants, de supprimer l'esclavage, d'in-
terdire le trafic des armes, etc. Enfin,
il est soumis au contrôle de la com-
mission des mandats, qui a le droit de
lui présenter des observations sur sa
gestion.